Original Bitcoin Outline

Originally outlined in “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, the Bitcoin monetary system uses public-key cryptography (the same technology of private Internet connections) to implement monetary identity as a private key and its representation as the corresponding public key, so this representation becomes inherently distinct from its represented money. The whole Bitcoin system relies on that distinction: as an essentially decentralized monetary system, it controls the money supply by self-certifying a public chain of monetary transactions, which contains money representations (public keys) alone, and never the money (private keys) they represent. This way, monetary identity remains nonrepresentational, private, possibly anonymous (pseudonymous), and impossible to replicate.